


I Told You We Were Waiting For Someone

by TintedPink



Series: Afterlife (Working Title) [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: AI!Tony, Afterlife, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, I only saw the movie once, M/M, Morgan Stark has a 10 year old terror child, Multi, Or at least I tried for it to be, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Steve Rogers just keeps on living, off screen major character death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 01:30:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18713773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TintedPink/pseuds/TintedPink
Summary: Eventually, Tony, Pepper and Stephen find each other.





	I Told You We Were Waiting For Someone

**Author's Note:**

> For notes on the universe, see end notes. Tumblr post [here](https://iwritefanficsometimes.tumblr.com/post/184656785769/i-told-you-we-were-waiting-for-someone-so-im)

Stephen going to Pepper and apologizing for the timeline.

Pepper forgiving Stephen and inviting him to have some coffee. “Or tea? Yeah, you seem like a tea guy.”

Morgan wants to know why his cape is like Thor’s.

Stephen tells her it’s because Thor copied him.

Morgan accepts this without question and then calls her uncle Bruce to tell him Thor is a copy-cat.

Bruce doesn’t tell Thor.

Pepper gives Stephen a standing invitation to stop by, because she’s intimately familiar with how quickly Tony can get under people’s skin and burrow into their hearts.

She doesn’t know the half of it.

Stephen stops by once a month or so, and Morgan gets used to the sight of him.

So does Pepper.

She likes it when Stephen comes by and they have a chance to talk.

So does Stephen.

“Doctor Strange, why can’t you use your magic to bring back my dad?”

The question isn’t accusing, she seems to understand that the answer must be a negative, she just wants to know _why_.

“Because bringing back people from the dead is a very dangerous kind of magic, and if I did it, he might not come back the same Dad you knew.”

She nods, considering this.

“So you can, but he’d just be bad.”

“Yes.”

She nods again and hugs him around the legs.

“If he wouldn’t be bad, would you do it?”

He answers too quickly.

“Yes.”

Morgan stays clinging to him for a minute before she’s satisfied with the answer and Stephen.

“Mom says you can stay for dinner. I helped mix the salad.”

Stephen smiles.

* * *

 

* * *

It’s not until Morgan is nearly 15 that they find the AI.

Turning him on is an accident. If they’d known they would’ve left it alone. Great timing for Tony to forget to label an AI

AI Tony doesn’t remember Morgan, or marriage, or a farm. He’s stuck so far in the past he’s almost unrecognizable.

Rhodey, Pepper, and Happy spend a lot of time talking to this version of Tony, Pre-Ultron, and they find that the more they tell him about the present the less and less he responds.

Eventually Rhodey makes the executive decision to get Friday involved.

She is understandably unsure of her own abilities, but she does her best to bring AI Tony around.

After three weeks of near constant interface, Friday and Tony emerge in their holograms, and Tony still looks down, as much as any AI can be down, but he wants to interact with Morgan.

There’s not much footage of Tony interacting with Morgan, just lots of pictures. Pepper is the one who tells him about his relationship with Morgan, so he can talk to her.

They talk for an hour, and Morgan cries into the shoulder of the Iron Man armour Tony is controlling, and AI Tony is just trying to reconcile himself with a child.

They don’t talk much after that.

Tony is less like a ghost and more like a shell.

Morgan is less like a person and more like a figment.

It makes Pepper and Rhodey both sad to see it.

Eventually, they ask Tony if he wants to go offline.

Tony says yes.

They shut him down and pack him up in a box labeled “Tony.” No one touches it for forty years.

* * *

Morgan is 55 when she’s going through her mother’s personal effects. She finds the box labelled “Tony” and opens it up, curious.

She recognizes the programming that contains an AI immediately. She knows it’s her father’s digital replica.

She puts it back in the box.

Three days later she takes the box back out again. All she has left of her father is a 50 year old hologram, every design he’d ever made, and this AI.

She turns it on.

It doesn’t recognize her, and she didn’t expect it to.

“Hey! Where’s Rhodey? Pepper? I thought we agred I was going offline.”

“Change of plans. Try the house on for size.”

“Are you making me a butler?” Tony souds entirely offended, and Morgan smiles.

“No. You’d be terrible at it.”

“I really would. So what’s the about... whoever you are?”

“I just think it’s time you got to stretch your legs, that’s all.”

“Technically speaking, I don’t have legs. I’m a string of binary code.”

“Don’t get smart with me or I’ll make you share a charging station with Dum-e.”

“He’s still around?” He asked, looking aroud him, and Morgan smiled.

“Interface with the house and find out.”

It was the only permission AI Tony needed, and suddenly things were turning on and off at random, and there were dozen things happening all around the old farm house where she grew up.

“Hey, wait a minute!”

She leaves before he can tell her what he’s indignant about. She shuts down the internet access just in case.

* * *

“It’d take a genius to figure this out. Not that you’re not a genius, Morgan, but you’re in bio-tech, and this is... not that.”

Morgan looks at Harley quizically. “Are you saying you can’t figure it out?”

“Of course I can figure it out, but it’s going to take time we don’t have.”

“What if I said I had someone who might be able to help us.”

“And you’ve been sitting on them this entire time!?”

“It’s... complicated.”

* * *

“You aren’t a little scamp any more. Hell, I think you might be older than I am. Which means I’m really old. Shit.” Tony says to Harley as he sorts through the data they’ve given him access to.

“This will never work, an AI doesn’t have the same creative capabilities as a-“

“Got it!” Tony said, displaying a hologram that... actually looked like it could work.

“Shit.”

“Yeah,” Morgan smiled. “Great work Tony.”

“Sure thing.”

Harely looks at Morgan quizzically.

Morgan doesn’t look back.

* * *

“And who are you?”

“My name’s Elizabeth. I’m ten. You’re dead.”

“Smart one. Yeah, I heard. Say, Elizabeth, shouldn’t you be monitored by someone with... I don’t know, a body?”

“No. Mom said that I’m old enough to go wherever I want in the compound so long as I don’t do anything that might get me hurt.”

“Like walk into an active training room?”

“Basically.”

“Fair. Alright, well, your mom...”

“Morgan,”

“Morgan-” He said it and suddenly things made sense. “Morgan Stark.”

“Yup, and I’m Elizabeth Stark. You’re Tony Stark. That’s Harley. Hi, Harely. I’m not supposed to be here so don’t tell Mom, okay? Thanks.”

“Elizabeth, come on. Morgan wouldn’t want you to be hanging around in here.”

“He’s right. I’m a bad influence.”

“Shut up, Tony.”

“Watch your language, sir, there’s a lady present!”

Morgan laughed. “You sound like Mr. Rogers.”

“He’s still around???”

“Barely.” Harley mumbled under his breath. “Doesn’t keep him from trying to act like he’s still in charge of everything.”

“Mr. Rogers is bossy. Mom and Harley hate it. Peter says it’s fine. I think he just says that to be nice thought.”

“Sounds like it. Who’s Peter?”

“Oh, he’s Spider Man. You used to know him.” She squints at him, like she’s wary now that he’s not remembering all the parts of the past that he should. “Before you did the snap, you knew him. You gave him his first good spider suit. And then took it away. And then gave it back.”

“Sounds like me. You gonna take her back to her mom?” Tony asked Harley, and Elizabeth whined.

“No..! Come on, Uncle Harley, please??”

“Don’t Uncle Harley at me, you know that stopped working years ago. Come on, we’re doing lunch, and you’ll want to be out of here before Morgan gets an alert.”

“I’m afraid it’s too late for that, Harley,” Friday’s voice says apologetically, and Harley sighs.

“Figures. See you around, Tony. We’ve got some stuff to talk to you about later.”

“Yeah, sure thing! It’s not like I’m being held prisoner in my own lab!” AI Tony calls after Elizabeth and Harley.

“You’re not a prisoner, boss. Just on house arrest.”

“How can you call me boss and be the holder of the keys to my cell?”

“Not a prison.”

“Feels like a prison.”

“When given free reign of the house the first time you were brought online, you broke eight different electrical appliance. For the safety of the inhabitants, you’ll have to stay here.”

“We’re not worried about me breaking the lab? I could do some real damage here.”

“But would you?”

“...No.” Tony sighed, as much as any AI can sigh.

* * *

“What’s with the secret keeping Morgan? I feel like a piece of dirty laundry.”

“Captain Rogers would have a lot to say about an AI of you. I don’t want to listen to any of it.”

“So he’s Captain, now? Lizzie called him Mr. Rogers. Like from the tv show you’re too young to remember and I never actually watched.”

“Trust me, I’ve heard plenty about it over the years.” Morgan laughed, working across from her father’s hologram, but never looking at it. “But that’s just how Lizzie is. Everyone else she just calls by their first names, but Steve started putting a fuss up about it, so she started calling him Mr. Rogers instead.” She smirks to herself. “He’s gotten fussy in his old age.”

“Fussier. He was always fussy. He just wore a righteous look and an American Ass and everyone called him a patriot.”

“Well, two out of three of those things are still true.”

“No! He lost the ass?”

“He’s over 150 years old, Tony.”

“He’s a super soldier. He’s not supposed to loose the ass.”

“You’re kind of obsessed with Captain America’s ass.”

“I used to make his suits.”

Morgan laughs and it hits AI Tony in a very real way that he is talking to his daughter. He made his daughter laugh.

* * *

“Tony! Mom gave me permission to visit.”

“How’d you weasel that out of her?” Tony asked, turning his hologram away from the manipulation station, despite his mind still definately being on it. It’s great to be an AI.

“I promised to clean my entire room.”

“Oh wow. That’s a hefty promise.”

“I’m not really going to do the _entire_ room. She ever checks under the bed.” She rolls her eyes, and Tony raises an eyebrow at Friday’s security camera.

“I’m thinking she might this time around.”

She rolled her eyes in a way that was so familiar Tony was caught off gaurd for a minute.

“Tony. Hey! Tony!” She waved her hand in front of his face and he snapped his processing power back to attention.

“Hey is for horses, young lady.”

Elizabeth rolled her eyes again, and AI Tony felt fond.

He felt.

“Tony! Why do you keep ignoring me?”

“I’m not ignoring you, Lizzie. I’m thinking deeply.”

“But you’re a computer. You have enough processing power to focus on other things and think deeply.”

“You’re right, but I’m running a little slow in my old age.”

She wrinkled her nose at him, “you don’t look that old.”

“Holograms don’t age. I’m a lot older than I look.”

She frowns. “Does that make you sad?”

Tony is about to say no, because he is an AI and incapable of feeling anything, let alone sadness, it’s all just predetermined choices and algorithms except... “yeah, it does.”

She patted the console that was closest to her like she might pat a sad cat. “I’m sorry you can’t get old like everyone else, Tony.”

“Me too.”

* * *

There’s a commotion happening that Tony can pick up even though he only has access to the mics in the lab. There’s some yelling, some smashing, and then there’s a bunch of sparks forming a portal into his lab and a weirdly dressed man with shaking hands and grey streaks in his hair is standing in his lab. Staring at him.

“Can I help you?” Tony asked, reaching out to Friday to activate security protocols and start shutting down anything and everything even remotely vulnerable in the compound.

“I think maybe I can help you, Tony.” The man says, and Tony cocks an eyebrow at him.

“Um, no offense, but I’m actually a computer. An AI. I’m not being held captive or whatever weird conspiracy theory has been floating around the internet. The real Tony Stark is dead. I’m just a copy.”

The man shakes his head and Tony keeps pushing Friday to tell her what’s going on, but he’s been bugging her so much lately that she’s ignoring him. Great.

“You’re not just a copy. You’re a part of his soul.”

“What?” Tony asked, staring at him like he was off his rocker (he was.)

“I second that.” Morgan said, glaring at the newcomer from the doorway.

“Morgan, I made you a promise years ago, that if I could bring him back-“

“He’s been dead for fifty years, Strange. Even if you could bring him back, what good would it do, aside from easing your guilt?” Her eyes are hard and Tony can tell this must be a touchy subject for her. That’s why he feels it pertinent to interject.

“Is that why I’m having feelings? Because AIs don’t usually have feelings.”

Stephen gestured at Tony like an argument had just been won and Morgan glared.

“You’re not touching him.”

“There’s a piece of his soul trapped here, Morgan.”

“He’s a computer!”

“Mom,” Elizabeth murmurs from the doorway. “Ama said she wants to talk to you.”

Morgan’s face falls into her hands and she digs the tips of her fingers into her scalp.

“Mom?”

“I’m coming, honey.” Morgan told her daughter, still frozen and clutching her head. “Tell Ama I’ll be there in a minute.”

Elizabeth left and then it was just the three of them.

Stephen was the first to break the silence. “If you leave him here, there’s always going to be a piece of his soul haunting you.”

“He’s fine right there.”

“He’s not. The longer he stays the more disconnected this piece of his soul becomes from the rest. With enough time it could break off entirely, and the chaos that comes with splitting a soul...” strange sighed. “If you’re not willing to let me try summoning the rest, at least let me send this piece back.”

“I can’t lose him.”

“I’ve been gone for a long time, honey.” Tony spoke up from where his hologram was trapped in a console. “Keeping me here isn’t really helping you anymore. It’s time to let go.”

“You’re a computer!”

“He’s a computer with a piece of your father’s soul, Morgan. It’s understandable that you’re attached, but the longer you leave him here, the more likely his soul will split. It could wrench Tony out of whatever afterlife he’s living and make him miserable for the rest of eternity.”

“Morgan.” Tony said, when Morgan still wouldn’t look up at them. “I don’t know who this guy is, but I think I might agree with him.”

“Stop it.” She said, nearly too quiet for his mics to pick up. “Stop it. Shut up. He’s.. he’s fine. It’s fine. There’s not.. it’s just an AI.”

“An AI with feelings and the capacity to be creative. You have to know that’s not normal.”

Morgan is silent for a few more minutes before shaking her head and straightening her back. “Do whatever you have to.” She tells him, and both Stephen and Tony are struck by how much she looks like Pepper in that moment. She walks away with her head held high and doesn’t even look back to say goodbye.

It hurts.

* * *

On the Astral Plane, Stephen guides Tony’s soul through the process of rejoining it’s larger half, and Tony finds it hard to believe that he, a network of processing power, can project an astral form.

“Do you see how much more translucent you are than I am? It’s because you’re only a fragment. Tony put his soul into designing this AI just in case, and you were so similar to him that his soul might not have recognized his death.”

“Ghost soul. Cool. I actually haven’t heard weirder things, which is odd, but a pleasant surprise. When do I get dead?”

“I have an incantation I can try, but it might hurt.”

“Just do it.”

* * *

“Look who’s back.”

Tony opened his eyes to see the roof of the porch of his dream house with Pepper. He sat up and was greeted with Pepper drinking an ice tea and smiled at him. Pepper, who looked as young as she had been when they’d gotten married. He knew objectively that she’d gotten older, but he hadn’t been online for her death. It was like jumping back in time to before he was an Artificial Intelligence. “You were gone for a while. Glad to have you back.”

“I put a part of my soul in the AI.”

“Yeah,” She nodded, handing him an untouched and perfectly cool glass of tea from the tray beside her. He took it without hesitation, shocked to feel the condensation, the smooth glass, the hard edge of the bottom of it. “I mean, I didn’t know that was where it was, but I knew that some part of you was still trapped there. You had that way of looking off into space sometimes, I think that was when you were over there.” She took another sip of her tea and Tony mimicked her, tasting something for what felt like the first time in fifty years. Probably because it was.

“Was I here before?” He asked, and Pepper nodded.

“You were here when I got here. Waiting for me like we were still newlyweds. Even carried me over the threshold.” She smiled, reaching out and stroking her hand down his cheek. Tony closed his eyes and leaned into the touch. “Figured the least I could do was be waiting for you with some sweet tea.”

“What did I ever do to deserve you?” He reached for her free hand and dragged her closer to him, needing to feel her solidly against him to prove to himself that it wasn’t just a dream.

“You became a great man. That makes you deserving of just about anything you want.” She followed where he pulled her, settling into his lap and wrapping her arms around his waist. “And now we just have to wait for our baby.”

“Oh god, don’t say that. I don’t want her to be here.”

“And I do?” She laughed, pulling a strand of his hair back into place. “But we all come here. She’ll come and visit us, sometime. It’ll be nice, I promise.”

“I think she hated me, at the end.”

Pepper frowned and ran her thumb over his eyebrow, calling his attention to her. “I know our daughter, Tony. Morgan may have been frustrated, you’re a frustrating man,” she laughed and kissed his forehead, pulling him into a hug. “But she loved you with her whole heart, and nothing could have changed that.”

“I hope you’re right.”

* * *

“Huh,” Tony said, raising an eyebrow at a newly deceased Doctor Strange. He and Pepper were the only ones left in their little afterlife, everyone else having reincarnated long ago and moved on to other after lives. But not them. “I told Pepper we were waiting for someone. Pep! We have a guest.”

“What?” She asked, coming out from the house, a smudge of paint on her right cheek. “Tony who-? Oh! Doctor Strange!”

“I told you we were waiting for someone. Didn’t I tell you?”

“You did, and it’s just as insufferable to hear you say it now as it was a millenium ago.” She leaned down to kiss Tony on the cheek and then looked back up at Stephen. “Won’t you come inside? If I’d known you were coming I would have had something ready for you, but Tony and I stopped bothering with food centuries ago.”

“That’s not entirely true. I still soul magic up a cheese burger every now and then.”

Pepper rolled her eyes and smiled at Stephen’s flabbergasted look. “You don’t have to just stand there, Stephen.”

“Yeah, Strange. Come sit down, take a load off. I’ll keep you company while Pepper does food.” He said, looking at Pepper for approval. She waved him off.

“He’s actually not as useless in the kitchen as he used to be, but it’s been so long since he’s done anything but cheese burgers he might have forgotten.”

Stephen felt like he was watching some kind of television show, an outsider looking into the afterlives of two souls who were obviously extremely close. What was he doing here?

“Honey, I think we broke him. Strange, you with us pal?” Tony got up from his chair, setting aside the bits and bobs he’d been tinkering with for the last 100 years or so. He came down the stairs slowly, hands outstretched to Stephen. “Stephen? Hey, did you leave a piece of your soul back on earth too?” He laughed, trying to break the tension.

“I don’t understand why I’m here.” He said finally, shrugging off Tony’s hand where it touched his forearm. Only then did he realize that his hands weren’t shaking. The scars were still there, but his hands were as steady as they ever were. When he looked back up at Tony his right arm was also heavily scarred, but his face was unmarred. He looked back down at his hands and Tony caught the drift.

“It’s pretty easy to hide scars here, if that’s something you want. I can show you. Pepper’s skin is flawless, but I’ve got a few doosies that I’ve gotten pretty good at hiding. I mean, I know scars give a man character, but not the expense of this face.” He ran his scarred hand over his unscarred cheek. “You wanna take a minute? Let’s sit down.”

Stephen followed Tony’s lead to the porch and sat down to listen to Pepper and Tony recount their experiences in the afterlife.

* * *

Souls don’t really sleep, so when Stephen opens his eyes it’s not because he’d really been sleeping. If he tried hard enough, meditation was nearly sleeping, but there was no astral form to project into while he was “sleeping.”

There was no need. The fate of the universe belonged to someone else now. As much as he hated giving the duty up, Tony and Pepper were right about him deserving a retirement.

Pepper was the first to stir, reading a newly published (on earth) book by the reincarnation of her great grand daughter. “Such talent. Honestly. I wish we had done more of the liberal arts, Tony.” She passed the tablet to Tony, who touched it and knew the entire contents of the book. Pepper still preferred the act of reading, while Tony preferred to cut to the chase.

“I hate the liberal arts, but it is a good book. Strange.” He passed the tablet and Stephen handed it back to Pepper after learning the book’s title.

“I’ll read through it later.” He laced his fingers through Tony’s and let himself play with Pepper’s soft hair. “We’ve got all the time in the world.”

There was a long pause and Stephen looked up at Tony and Pepper. They were having a silent conversation, and Stephen felt something like dread settle in his stomach.

“Pepper and I have been thinking.” Tony started before handing the reigns over to Pepper.

She rolled her eyes at Tony and then turned on her side to face Stephen completely, Tony leaning up on his elbow to give himself a better view of them. “We want to reincarnate, Stephen.” She said softly, laying one hand over his cheek. “We love being here with you. We do.” She reiterated when he looked like he was about to protest. “But everyone else we all know is long gone, back to the land of the living. We aren’t talking about any time soon, we want some more time with you here, but... We do want to go back, and we want you to come with us.”

“I can’t imagine living another life without you, Strange. What do you say?” Tony’s hand settled on Pepper’s hip, but his eyes were pleading at Stephen. “Come with us?”

Stephen looked between the two of them, momentarily lost for words before he finally said, “I don’t know how I could say no to that.”

“Ideally, you don’t.” Tony smiled, leaning across Pepper to plant a kiss on Stephen’s cheek just above where Pepper’s hand rested. “And since this is the afterlife, everything’s pretty ideal.”

Pepper elbowed Tony to get him to get off of her and leand in to give Stephen a kiss of her own, just a soft peck on unchapped lips. “I can’t wait to live a life with you, Stephen Strange.”

“Ditto.” Tony said from where he’d collapsed back onto the bed.

“I love you both.” Stephen smiled and Pepper smiled back.

“Ditto.”

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is officially compliant within my larger afterlife universe. If you haven’t read that, you don’t have to have read that to read this. I’ll fill in the gaps as time goes on, but here’s what you may need to know.  
> The serum kept Steve alive even after the big time kerfuffle, and he’s still alive and kicking in the year of our lord 2069 (That was an accident, but it’s fucking hilarious and I’m not changing the dates. Tony Stark would want it this way.) He’s super old, but he’s hanging in there.  
> Tony’s soul was spread out across all his little bits and bobs of technology, but because the AI was so much like Tony, that part didn’t get recalled and got stuck. Like a ghost.  
> Basically Tony Stark is haunting his own AI, and that’s why the AI is able to feel things, and think creatively. Because it’s actually being influenced by Tony’s soul.  
> Pepper and Tony were together in the afterlife for a couple of years before Tony got all the way put back.  
> Tony forgets all the things that happened between his first death and his soul knitting back together, because he’s essentially entering the afterlife for the first time all over again, and when you enter the afterlife you lose all the things from before. For reasons? I know what I mean I promise to explain it in a future fic.  
> Stephen, Pepper, and Tony are soulmates. Soulmates meet up in the afterlife and then they reincarnate together, which Tony and Pepper figured out after watching everyone they knew reincarnate. If you want to hear more about that drop me a line in my ask box. I don’t think all of that will ever get it’s own fic, but I’m happy to answer questions.  
> If you think of anything else that needs explaining leave it in a comment below. Thanks for reading!


End file.
